The Assessment of the Russian Revolution[1]

Published:Published in April 1908 in the journalPrzeglad Socjaldemokratyczny, No. 2. Signed: N.Lenin.

      Published in Russian (translated from Polish) on Mar 10 (23), 1908 inProletary, No. 30.

      Published according to the text inProletaryverified with the text of the journal.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1973,

      Moscow,Volume 15,

      pages50-62.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Noone in Russia would now dream of making a revolution
according to Marx. This, or approximately this, was recently announced by a
liberal-even an almost democratic—even an almost
Social-Democratic—(Menshevik) paper,Stolichnaya Pochta.[2]And to be quite fair to the authors of
this pronouncement,they have successfully caught theessenceof
the current political mood and of the attitude to the lessons of our
revolution which undoubtedly prevail among the widest circles of the
intellectuals, half-educated philistines and probably in many sections of
the quite uneducated petty bourgeoisie as well.

Thispronouncement does not only express hatred of Marxism in general,
with its unswerving conviction of the revolutionary mission of the
proletariat and its whole hearted readiness to support any revolutionary
movement of the masses, to sharpen their struggle and to go through with
it. It expresses also hatred of the methods of struggle, the forms of
action, and the tactics which have been testedquite recentlyin
theactual practiceof the Russian revolution. All those
victories—or half-victories, quarter-victories, rather—which our
revolution won, were achieved entirely and exclusively thanks to the direct
revolutionary onset of the proletariat, which was marching at the head of
the non-proletarian elements of the working people. All the defeats were
due to the weakening of such an onset, to the tactics of avoiding it,
tactics based on the absence of it, and sometimes (among the Cadets) on
directly seeking to eliminate it.

Andtoday, in the period of sweeping counter-revolutionary repressions,
the philistines are adapting themselvesin cowardly fashion to the new masters, currying favour with the new
caliphs for an hour, renouncing the past, trying to forget it, to persuade
themselves and others that no one in Russia now dreams of making a
revolution according to Marx, no one is dreaming of the “dictatorship of
the proletariat” andso forth.

Inother revolutions of the bourgeoisie, the physical victory of the
old authorities over the insurgent people always aroused despondency and
demoralisation among wide circles of “educated” society. But among the
bourgeois parties which had made a real fight for liberty, which had played
any appreciable part in real revolutionary events, there were always to be
traced illusions the reverse of those which now prevail among the
intellectualist petty bourgeoisie in Russia. They were illusions about an
inevitable, immediateandcomplete victory of “liberty, equality
and fraternity”, illusions about a republic not of the bourgeoisie but of
all humanity, a republic which would introduce peace on earth and good will
among men. They were illusions about the absence of class differences
within the people oppressed by the monarchy and the medieval order of
things, about the impossibility of conquering an “idea” by methods of
violence, about the absolutely opposite nature of the feudalism that had
outlived its day and the new free democratic republican system, the
bourgeois nature of which was not realised at all, or was realised only
very vaguely.

Thereforein periods of counter-revolution representatives of the
proletariat who had worked their way through to the standpoint of
scientific socialism had to fight (as, for example, Marx and Engels did in
1850) against the illusions of the bourgeois republicans, against an
idealist conception of the traditions of the revolution and of its essence,
against superficial phrases which were replacing consistent and serious
work within a

definite class.[3]But in Russia the exact opposite prevails. We
don’t see any illusions of primitive republicanism hindering the
essential work of continuing revolutionary activity in the new and changed
conditions. We see noexaggerationof the meaning of a republic,
the transformation of this essential watchword of the struggle against
feudalism and the monarchy intoa watchword of each and every struggle for the liberation of all those that
work and are exploited. The

Socialist-Revolutionaries[4]and the groups akin to them, who were
encouraging ideassimilarto these, have remained a mere handful,
and the period of the three years’ revolutionary storm (1905-07) has
brought them—instead of wide spread enthusiasm for republicanism—a new
part.y of theopportunistpetty bourgeoisie, the Popular
Socialists, a new increase in anti-political rebelliousness and anarchism.

Inpetty-bourgeois Germany, the day after the first onset of the
revolution in 1848 the illusions prevalent among the petty-bourgeois
republican democrats were strikingly in evidence. In petty-bourgeois
Russia, on the day after the onset of the revolution in 1905, there was
striking evidence, and there is still evidence, of the illusions of
petty-bourgeois opportunism, which hoped to achieve a compromise without a
struggle, feared a struggle and after the first defeat hastened to renounce
its own past, poisoning the public atmosphere with despondence,
faint-heartedness and apostasy.

Evidentlythis difference arises from the difference in the social
system and in the historical circumstances of the two revolutions. But. it
is not a question of the mass of the petty-bourgeois population in Russia
finding itself in less sharp opposition to the old order. Just the
reverse. Our peasantry in the very first stage of the Russian revolution
brought into being an agrarian movement incomparably more powerful,
definite, and politically conscious than those that arose in the previous
bourgeois revolutions of the nineteenth century. The trouble is that the
social stratum which formed the core of the revolutionary democrats in
Europe–the master craftsmen in the towns, the urban bourgeoisie and petty
bourgeoisie—wereboundin Russia to turn to
counter-revolutionary liberalism. The class-consciousness of the socialist
proletariat, moving hand in hand with the international army of socialist
revolution in Europe, the extreme revolutionary spirit of the muzhik,
driven by the age-old yoke of the feudal-minded landlords to a state of
utter desperation and to the demand for confiscation of the landed
estates—these are the circumstances which threw Russian liberalism into
the arms of counter-revolutionmuch more powerfully than ever they did the liberals of Europe. And
therefore on the Russian working class there has devolved with particular
force the task of preserving the traditions of revolutionary struggle which
the intellectuals and t.he petty bourgeoisie are hastening to renounce,
developing and strengthening these traditions, imbuing with them the
consciousness of the great mass of the people, and carrying them forward to
the next inevitable upsurge of the democratic movement.

Theworkers themselves are spontaneously carrying on just such a
struggle. Too passionately did they live through the great struggle in
October and December. Too clearly did they see the change which took place
in their conditiononlyas a result of that direct revolutionary
struggle. They talk now, or at any rate they all feel, like that weaver who
said in a letter to his trade union journal: “The factory owners have
taken away what we won, the foremen are once again bullying us,just
wait, 1905 will come again."

Justwait, 1905 will come again. That is how the workers look at
things. For them that year of struggle provided a model ofwhat has to
be done. For the intellectuals and the renegading petty bourgeois it
was the “insane year”, a model ofwhat should not be done. For
the proletariat, the working over and critical acceptance of the experience
of the revolution must consist in learning how to apply thethenmethods of strugglemore successfully, so as to make the same
October strike struggle and December armed struggle more massive, more
concentrated and more conscious. For counter-revolutionary liberalism,
which leads the renegading intelligentsia on a halter, assimilating the
experience of the revolution is bound to consist in finishing for ever with
the “naive” impulsiveness of “untamed” mass struggle, and replacing it
by “cultured and civilised”constitutionalwork, on the basis of
Stolypin’s “constitutionalism”.

Todayall and sundry are talking about the assimilation and critical
evaluation of the experience of the revolution. Socialists and liberals
talk about it. Opportunists and revolutionary Social-Democrats talk about
it. But not all understand that it is between the two oppositesabove
mentionedthat all the multiform recipes for assimilation of the
experience of the revolution fluctuate. Not all putthe question clearly: is it the experience of the revolutionary struggle
which we must assimilate, and help the masses to assimilate, for the
purpose of a more consistent, stubborn and resolute fight; or is it the
“experiment” of Cadet betrayal of the revolution that we must assimilate
and pass on to the masses?

KarlKautsky has approached this question in its fundamental
theoretical aspect. In the second edition of his well-known workThe
Social Revolution, which has been translated into all the principal
European languages, he made a number of additions and amendments touching
on the experience of the Russian revolution. The preface to the second
edition is dated October 1906: therefore the author already had the
material to judge, not only of theSturm und Drangof 1905, but
also of the chief events in the “Cadet period” of our revolution, the
period of universal (almost universal) enthusiasm over the electoral
victories of the Cadets and the First Duma.

Whatproblems in the experience of the Russian revolution, then, did
Kautsky consider sufficiently outstanding and basic, or at least
sufficiently important to providenewmaterial for a Marxist
studyingin general“the forms and weapons of the social
revolution” (the heading to para graph seven in Kautsky’s work, as
supplemented in keeping with the experience of 1905-06)?

Theauthor has taken two questions.

First,the question of the class composition of the forces which arecapableof winning victory in the Russian revolution, making it a
really victorious revolution.

Secondly,the question of the importance of those higher forms of mass
struggle—higher in the direction of their revolutionary energy and in
their aggressive character— which the Russian revolution brought forth,
namely, the struggle in December, i.e., the armed uprising.

Anysocialist (and especially a Marxist) studying at all attentively
the events of the Russian revolution is bound to recognise that these
really are the root and fundamental questions in assessing the Russian
revolution, and also in assessing the line of. tactics dictated to a
workers’ party by the present state of affairs, Unless we fully and clearly
realise what classes arecapable, in the light of objectiveeconomic conditions, of making the Russian bourgeois revolution victorious,
all our words about seeking to make that revolution victorious will be
empty phrases, mere democratic declamation, while our tactics in the
bourgeois revolution will inevitably be unprincipled and wavering.

Onthe other hand, in order concretely to determine the tactics of a
revolutionary party at the stormiest moments of the general crisis which
the country is living through, it is obviously insufficient merely to
indicate the classes capable ofactingin the spirit of a
victorious completion of the revolution. Revolutionary periods are
distinguished from periods of so-called peaceful development, periods when
economic conditions do not give rise to profound crises or powerful mass
movements, precisely in this: that theformsof struggle in
periods of the first type inevitably aremuch more varied, and the
direct revolutionary struggle of the masses predominates rather than the
propaganda and agitation activities conducted by leaders in parliament, in
the press, etc. Therefore if, in assessing revolutionary periods, we
confine ourselves to defining thelineof activity of the various
classes, without analysing theformsof their struggle, our
discussion in the scientific sense will be incomplete and undialectical,
while from the standpoint of practical politics it will degenerate into thedead letter of the raisoneur(with which, we may say in
parenthesis, comrade Plekhanov contents himself in nine-tenths of his
writings on Social-Democratic tactics in the Russian revolution).

Inorder to make a genuinely Marxist assessment of the revolution, from
the standpoint of dialectical materialism, it has to be assessed as the
struggle of live social forces, placed in particular objective conditions,
acting in a particular way and applying with greater or less success
particular forms of struggle. It is on the basis of such an analysis, and
only on that basis of course, that it is appropriate and indeed essential
for a Marxist to assess thetechnicalside of the struggle, the
technical questions which arise in its course. To recognise a definite form
of struggle and not to recognise the necessity of studying its technique,
is like recognising the necessity of taking part inparticularelections while ignoring the law which lays down the technique oftheseelections.

Letus go on now to the reply given by Kautsky to both the above-stated
questions, which, as we know, aroused a very prolonged and heated dispute
among the Russian Social-Democratsthroughoutthe revolution,
beginning with the spring of 1905, when the Bolshevik Third Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P.

in London[5]and the simultaneous Menshevik conference in Geneva laid
down the basic principles of their tactics in precise resolutions, and
ending with the London Congress of the United R.S.D.L.P. in the

spring of 1907.[6]

Tothe first question Kautsky gives the following reply. In Western
Europe, he says, the proletariat constitutes the great mass of the
population.Therefore the victory of democracy in present-day Europe means
the political supremacy of the proletariat. “In Russia, with her
predominantly peas ant population, this cannot be expected. Of course, the
victory of Social-Democracy in the foreseeable (in German,absehbar) future is not ruled out in Russia either: but that
victory could be only the result of an alliance (Koalition) of the
proletariat and the peasantry.” And Kautsky even expresses the opinion
that such a victory would inevitably give a tremendous impetus to
proletarian revolution in Western Europe.

Thuswe see that the concept of bourgeois revolution is not a
sufficient definition of the forces which may achieve victory in such a
revolution. Bourgeois revolutions are possible, and have occurred, in which
the commercial, or commercial and industrial, bourgeoisie played the part
of the chief motive force. The victory of such revolutions was possible as
the victory of the appropriate section of the bourgeoisie over its
adversaries (such as the privileged nobility or the absolute monarchy). In
Russia things are different. The victory of the bourgeois revolution is
impossible in our countryas the victory of the bourgeoisie. This
sounds paradoxical, but it is a fact. The preponderance of the peasant
population, its terrible oppression by the semi-feudal big landowning
system, the strength and class-consciousness of the proletariat already
organised in a socialist party—all these circumstances impart toourbourgeois revolution aspecificcharacter. This
peculiarity does not eliminate the bourgeois character of the revolution(as Martov and Plekhanov attempted to present the case in their more than
lame remarks on Kautsky’s attitude). It only determines the
counter-revolutionary character of our bourgeoisie and the necessity of a
dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry for victoryin
sucha revolution. For a “coalition of the proletariat and the
peasantry”, winningvictoryin a bourgeois revolution, happens to
be nothing else than the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and the peasantry.

Thisproposition is the point of departure of the tactical differences
which arose in the ranks of the Social-Democrats during the
revolution. Only if this is taken into account can one understand all the
disputes on particular questions (support of the Cadets in general,a Left
bloc and its character, etc.) and the clashes in individual cases. It is
only this basic tactical divergence—and not at all the question of

“boyevism”[7]or “boycottism”, as uninformed people sometimes
think—that is thesourceof the differences between the
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in the first period of the revolution
(1905-07).

Andone cannot sufficiently urge the necessity of studying this source
of the differences with every attention, and of examiningfrom this
point of viewthe experience of the First and Second Dumas and of the
direct struggle of the peasantry. If we don’t do this worknow, we shall not be able to take a single step in the tactical
field, when the next upsurge comes, without awakening old disputes or
creating group conflicts and dissensions within the Party. The attitude of
Social-Democracy to liberalism and to peas ant bourgeois democracy must be
determined on the basis of the experience of the Russian
revolution. Otherwise we shall have no principle or consistency iii the
tactics of the proletariat. “The alliance of the proletariat and the
peasantry”, let us note in passing, should not in any circumstances be
understood as meaning the fusion of various classes, or of the parties of
the proletariat and the peasantry. Not only fusion, but any prolonged
agreement would be destructive for the socialist party of the working
class, and wouldenfeeblethe revolutionary-democratic
struggle. That the peasantry inevitably wavers between the liberal
bourgeoisie and the proletariat follows from its position as a class;and our revolution has provided many examples of this in the most varied
fields of struggle (the boycott of the Witte Duma; the elections; the
Trudoviks in the First and Second Dumas, etc.). Only if it pursues an
unquestionably independent policy as vanguard of the revolution will the
proletariat be able to split the peasantry away from the liberals, rid it
of their influence, rally the peasantry behind it in the struggle and thus
bring about an “alliance”de facto—onethat emerges and
becomes effective, when and to the extent that the peasantry are conducting
a revolutionary fight. It is not flirtations with the Trudoviks, but
merciless criticism of their weaknesses and vacillations, the propaganda of
the idea of a republican and revolutionary peasant party, that can give
effect to the “alliance” of the proletariat and the peasantry forvictoryover their common enemies, and not for playing at blocs
and agreements.

Thisspecific character of the Russian bourgeois revolution which we
have pointed out distinguishes it from the other bourgeois revolutions of
modern times, but identifies it with thegreatbourgeois
revolutions of former times, when the peasantry played an outstanding
revolutionary part. In this respect the greatest attention should be paid
to what Frederick Engels wrote in his remarkably profound and
thought-stimulating article “On Historical Materialism” (the English
introduction toSocialism: Utopian and Scientific, translated into
German by Engels himself inNeue Zeit, 1892-93, 11th year,
Vol. 1). “Curiously enough,” says Engels, “in all the three great
bourgeois risings [the Reformation in Germany and the Peasant War in the
sixteenth century; the English revolution in the seventeenth century; the
French revolution in the eighteenth century I the peasantry furnishes the
army that has to do the fighting; and the peasantry is just the class that,
the victory once gained, is most surely ruined by the economic consequences
of that victory. A hundred years after Cromwell, the yeomanry of England
had almost disappeared. Anyhow, had it not been for that yeomanry and for
the plebeian element in the towns, the bourgeoisie alone would never have
fought the matter out to the bitter end, and would never have brought
Charles I to the scaffold. In order to secure even those conquests of the
bourgeoisie that were ripe forgathering at the time, the revolution had to be carried considerably
further—exactly as in 1793 in France and 1848 in Germany. This seems, in
fact, to be one of the laws of evolution of bourgeois society.”  And in
another. passage in the same article Engels points out that the French
revolution was the first uprising “that was really fought out up to the
destruction of one of the combatants, the aristocracy, and the complete
triumph of the other,

the bourgeoisie”.[8]

Boththese historical observations or general conclusions by Engels
have been remarkably confirmed in the course of the Russian revolution. It
has also been confirmed that only the intervention of the peasantry and the
proletariat—“the plebeian element in the towns"—is capable of
substantially pushing forward the bourgeois revolution. (Whereas in
sixteenth-century Germany, seventeenth-century England and
eighteenth-century France the peasantry could be put in the front rank, in
twentieth-century Russia the order must decidedly be reversed, since
without the initiative and guidance of the proletariat the peasantry counts
for nothing.) It has also been confirmed that the revolution must be takenvery much furtherthan its direct, immediate and already
fully-matured bourgeois aims, ifthoseaims are really to be
achieved, and if even minimum bourgeois conquests are to he irreversibly
consolidated. We can judge therefore with what scorn Engels would have
treated the philistine recipes for squeezing the revolution beforehand into
a directly bourgeois, narrowly bourgeois framework— “in order not to
frighten off the bourgeoisie”, as the Mensheviks in the Caucasus-said in
their 1905 resolution, or in order that there should be “a guarantee
against a restoration”, as Plekhanov said in Stockholm.

Kautskydiscusses the other question, the assessment of the
insurrection of December 1905, in the preface to the second edition of his
booklet. He writes: “I can now no longer assert as definitely as I did in
1902 that armed uprisings and barricade fighting will not play the decisive
part in the coming revolutions. Too clear evidence to the contrary is
provided by the experience of the street battles in Moscow, when a handful
of men held up a whole army f or a week in barricade fighting, and would
have almost gained the victory, had not the failure of the revolutionarymovement in other cities made it possible to dispatch such reinforcements
to the army that in the end a monstrously superior force was concentrated
against the insurgents. Of course, this relative success of the struggle on
the barricades was possible only because the city population energetically
supported the revolutionaries, while the troops were completely
demoralised. But who can affirm with certainty that something similar is
impossible in Western Europe?"

Andso, nearly a year after the insurrection, when there could be no
question of any desire to cheer the spirits of the fighting men, such a
careful investigator as Kautsky firmly recognises that the Moscow
insurrection represents a “relative success” of struggle on the
barricades, and thinks it necessary to amend his previous general
conclusion that the role of street battles in future revolutions cannot be
a great one.

Thestruggle of December 1905provedthat armed uprisingcanbe victorious in modern conditions of military technique and
military organisation. As a result of the December struggle the whole
international labour movement must henceforth reckon with the probability
of similar forms of fighting in the coming proletarian revolutions. These
are the conclusions which really follow from the experience of our
revolution: these are the lessons which the broadest masses of the people
should assimilate. How remote are these conclusions and these lessons from
thatlineof argument which Plekhanov opened up by his famous
Herostratean comment on the December insurrection:

"They should not have taken to arms.” What an ocean of renegade
comment was called forth by that assessment! What an endless number of
dirty liberal hands seized upon it, in order to carry demoralisation and a
spirit of petty-bourgeois compromise into the ranks of the workers!

Thereis not a grain of historical truth in Plekhanov’s
assessment. If Marx, who had said six months before the Commune that an
insurrection would be madness, nevertheless was able to sum up that
“madness” as the greatest mass movement of the proletariat in the
nineteenth century, then with a thousand times more justification must the
Russian Social-Democrats inspire the masses with the convictionthat the December struggle was the most essential, the most legitimate, the
greatest proletarian movement since the Commune. And the working class of
Russia will be trained up in such views, whatever individual intellectuals
in the ranks of Social-Democracy may say, and however loudly they may
lament.

Hereperhaps one remark is necessary, bearing in mind that this article
is being written for the Polish comrades. Not being familiar, to my regret,
with the Polish language, I know Polish conditions only by hearsay. And it
may be easy to retort that it is precisely in Poland that a whole party
strangled itself by impotent guerrilla warfare, terrorism and fireworky
outbreaks, and those precisely in the name of rebel traditions and a joint
struggle of the proletariat and the peasantry (the so-called Right wing in
the Polish

Socialist Party[9]). It may very well be that from this standpoint
Polish conditions do in fact radically differ from conditions in the rest
of the Russian Empire. I cannot judge of this. I must say, however, that
nowhere except in Poland have we seen such a senseless departure from
revolutionary tactics, one that has aroused justified resistance and
opposition. And here the thought arises unbidden:

why, it was precisely in Poland that there was no mass armed struggle in
December 1905! And is it not for this very reason that in Poland, and only
in Poland, the distorted and senseless tactics of revolution-"making”
anarchism have found their home, and that conditions did not permit of the
development there of mass armed struggle, were it only for a short time? Is
it not the tradition of justsucha struggle, the tradition of the
December armed uprising, that is at times the only serious means of
overcoming anarchist tendencies within the workers’ party— not by means
of hackneyed, philistine, petty-bourgeois moralising, but by turning from
aimless, senseless, sporadic acts of violence to purposeful, mass violence,
linked with the broad movement and the sharpening of the direct proletarian
struggle?

Thequestion of evaluating our revolution is important not only
theoretically by any means. It is important directly, practically, in the
everyday sense. All our work of propaganda, agitation and organisation is
indissolubly boundup at the present time with the process of the assimilation of the lessons
of these three great years by the widest mass of the working class and the
semi-proletarian population. We cannot now confine ourselves to the bare
statement (in the spirit of the resolutions adopted by the Tenth Congress
of the P.S.P. Left wing) that the data available do not allow us to
determine at present whether it is the path of revolutionary explosion or
the path of long, slow, tiny steps forward that lies ahead of us. Of
course, no statistics in the world can at present lay that down. Of course,
we must carry on our work in such a way that it should be all imbued with a
generalsocialistspirit and content, whatever painful trials the
future has in store. But that is not all. To halt at this point means not
to give any effective leader ship to the proletarian party. We must frankly
put and firmly answer the question, in what direction will we now proceed
to assimilate the experience of the three years of revolution? We must
proclaim openly, for all to hear, for the behoof of the wavering and feeble
in spirit, to shame those who are turning renegade and deserting socialism,
that the workers’ party sees in the direct revolutionary struggle of the
masses, in the October and December struggles of 1905, the greatest
movements of the proletariat since the Commune; that only in the
development of such forms of struggle lies the pledge of coming successes
of the revolution; and that these examples of struggle must serve as a
beacon for us in training up new generations of fighters. Carrying on our
daily work in that direction, and remembering that only years of serious
and consistent preparatory activity ensured the Party its full influence on
the proletariat in 1905, we shall be able to reach the point that, whatever
the turn of events and the rate of disintegration of the autocracy, the
working class will continue to grow stronger and develop into a
class-conscious, revolutionary Social-Democratic force.

[1]Thisarticle was written by Lenin to acquaint the Polish
Social-Democrats with the differences that existed within the
R.S.D.L.P. and was published in their journalPrzeglad
Socjaldemokratyczny, No. 2, in April 1908.

PrzegladSocjaldemokratyczny—a journal published in Cracow
from 1902 to 1904 and from 1908 to 1910 by the Polish Social-Democrats with
the close participation of R. Luxemburg.

[2]StolichnayaPochta(Metropolitan Post)—a daily
newspaper, published in St. Petersburg from October 1906 to February
1908. At first the organ of the Left Cadets, it became, after February
1907, the mouthpiece of the Trudovik group. It was banned by the tsarist
government.

[3]Cf.Marx, Engels, Lenin,Zur deutschen Geschichte, Bd. II,
Hlb. I, S. 625-28. “Mai bis October”. Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1954

[4]Socialist-Revolutionaries(S. R.s)—a petty-bourgeois party
in Russia, which arose at the end of 4901 and the beginning of 1902 as a
result of the amalgamation of various Narodnik groups and circles(Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries, Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries,
etc.). The newspaperRevolutsionnaya Rossiya (Revolutionary
Russia) (1900-05) and the journalVestnik Russkoi Revolutsii
(Herald of the Russian Revolution) (1901-05) became its official
organs. The S.R.s did not see the class distinctions between the
proletarian and the small proprietor. They glossed over the class
differentiation and antagonisms within the peasantry, and repudiated the
leading role of the proletariat in the revolution. Their views were an
eclectic mixture of the ideas of Narodism and revisionism; they tried, as
Lenin put it, to “patch up the rents in the Narodnik ideas with bits of
fashionable opportunist ‘criticism’ of Marxism” (see present edition,
Vol. 9, p. 310). The tactics of individual terrorism, which the S.R.s
advocated as the basic method of struggle against the autocracy, caused
great harm to the revolutionary movement and made it difficult to organise
the masses for the revolutionary struggle.

Theagrarian programme of the S.R.s envisaged the abolition of private
landownership and the transfer of the land to the village communes on the
basis of the “labour principle”, “equalised” land tenure, and the
development of co-operatives. There was nothing socialist in this
programme, which the S.R.s described as a programme for “socialising the
land”. In analysing this programme, Lenin showed that if commodity
production an private farming on commonly-owned land were preserved, the
rule of capital could not be eliminated nor the labouring peasantry
delivered from exploitation and ruin. He also showed that co-operatives
functioning under the capitalist system could not save the small peasant,
since they only served to enrich the rural bourgeoisie. At the same time
Lenin pointed out that the demand for equalised land tenure, though not
socialist, was historically progressive, revolutionary-democratic in
character, inasmuch as it was aimed against reactionary landlordism.

TheBolshevik Party exposed the S.R.s’ attempts to pose as socialists;
it waged a hard fight against the S.R.s for influence over the peasantry,
and revealed the harmful effect which their tactics of individual terrorism
had on the working-class movement. At the same time, on definite
conditions, the Bolsheviks entered into temporary agreements with the S.R.s
in the struggle against tsarism.

Thefact that the peasantry did not constitute a homogeneous class
accounted for the political and ideological disunity and organisational
confusion among the S.R.s. and for their constant wavering between the
liberal bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Al ready during the first Russian
revolution the Right wing of the S.R.s split away from the Party and formed
the legal Labour Popular Socialist Party, which held views close to those
of the Cadets; the Left wing became the semi-anarchist league of
“Maximalists”. During the Stolypin reaction the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party experienced a complete ideological and organisational break-up, and
the First World War saw most S.R.s adopt social-chauvinist views.

Afterthe victory of the February bourgeois-democratic revolution in
1917 the S.R.s, together with the Mensheviks and Cadets, formed the
mainstay of the counter-revolutionary bourgeois-landlord Provisional
Government, and the leaders of this party (Kerensky, Avxentyev and Chernov)
were members of this government. The S.R. Party refused to support the
peasants’ demand for the abolition of landlordism, and indeed, stood for
its maintenance. Socialist-Revolutionary ministers in the Provisional
Government sent punitive expeditions-against the peasants who had seized
landed estates.

Atthe end of November 1917 the Left wing of the S.R.s founded an
independent party. To retain their influence among the peasant masses, they
recognised the Soviet power formally and entered into an agreement with the
Bolsheviks, but soon turned against the Soviets.

Duringthe years of foreign military intervention and civil war the
S.R.s carried on counter-revolutionary subversive activities, vigorously
supported the interventionists and whiteguard generals, took part in
counter-revolutionary plots, and organised -terrorist acts against Soviet
statesmen and Communist Party leaders. After the Civil War they continued
their activities against the Soviet state within the country and among the
whiteguard émigrés.

[5]TheThird Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.was held in London
between April 12 and 27 (April 25 and May 10),1905. The Congress was
organised and convened by the Bolsheviks under the direction of Lenin. It
was the first Bolshevik Congress.

Theagenda, drawn up by Lenin, was as follows:

(I)Report of the Organising Committee.

(II)Questions of Tactics:

(1) the armed uprising;

(2) the attitude towards the government’s policy on the eve of and during
the revolution (this point was devoted to two questions:

a. attitude towards the government’s policy on the eve of the
revolution;

b. the provisional revolutionary government);

(3) the attitude towards the peasant movement.

(III)Questions of Organisation:

(4) the relations between the workers and the intellectuals within the
Party organisations;

(5) the Party Rules.

(IV)Attitude Towards Other Parties and Trends:

(6) attitude to wards the breakaway group of the R.S.D.L.P.;

(7) attitude towards the non-Russian Social-Democratic organisations;

(8) attitude towards the liberals;

(9) practical agreements with the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

(V)Internal Questions of Party Life:

(10) propaganda and agitation.

(VI)Delegates’ Reports:

(11) report of the Central Committee;

(12) reports of delegates from the local committees.

(VII)Elections:

(13) elections;

(14) standing order for publication of the proceedings and decisions of the
Congress, and for the assumption of office by the newly elected
functionaries.

Onall the basic issues dealt with by the Third Congress Lenin had
written the draft resolutions, which he substantiated in articles published
in the newspaperVperyodprior to the Congress. Lenin spoke at the
Congress on the question of the armed uprising, on the participation of
Social-Democrats in the provisional revolutionarygovernment, on the attitude towards the peasant movement, on the Party
Rules, and on a number of other questions. The proceedings of the Congress
record 138 speeches and motions made by Lenin.

TheCongress amended the Party Rules:

(a) it adopted Lenin’s wording of Clause I;

(b) it defined precisely the rights of the Central Committee and its
relations with the local committees;

(c) it modified the organisational structure of the Party’s central
bodies: in place of the three centres (the Central Committee, the Central
Organ, and the Council of the Party) the Congress established a single
competent Party centre—the Central Committee.

Onthe work and the significance of the Third Party Congress see
Lenin’s article “The Third Congress” (present edition, Vol. 8,
pp. 442-49) and his bookTwo Tactics of Social-Democracy in the
Democratic Revolution(see present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 15-140).

[6]TheFifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.was held in London
between April 30 and May 19 (May 13 and June 1), 1907. It was attended by
336 delegates having a vote and consultative voice, of whom 105 were
Bolsheviks, 97 Mensheviks, 57 Bundists, 44 Polish Social-Democrats, 29
Lettish Social-Democrats and 4 “non-factionals”. The Bolsheviks were
backed by the Poles and the Letts and had a stable majority at the
Congress. The Bolshevik delegates included Lenin, Voroshilov, Dubrovinsky,
Stalin, Shahumyan and Yaroslavsky.

TheCongress discussed the following questions:

(1) Report of the Central Committee.

(2) Report of the Duma group, and its organisation.

(3) Attitude towards the bourgeois parties.

(4) The Duma.

(5) The “labour congress” and the non-party workers’ organisations.

(6) The trade unions and the Party.

(7) Guerrilla actions.

(8) Unemployment, economic crisis, and lock-outs.

(9) Organisational questions.

(10) The International Congress in Stuttgart (First of May, militarism).

(11) Work in the army.

(12) Miscellanea.

One of the basic questions dealt with at the Congress was that of the
policy to be adopted towards the bourgeois parties. Lenin delivered the
report on this question. The Congress adopted Bolshevik resolutions on all
fundamental issues. It elected a Central Commit tee consisting of 5
Bolsheviks, 4 Mensheviks, 2 Polish and 1 Lettish
Social-Democrats. Alternate members elected to the Central Committee
consisted of 10 Bolsheviks, 7 Mensheviks, 3 Polish and 2 Lettish
Social-Democrats.

TheCongress was a big victory of Bolshevism over the opportunist wing
of the Party—the Mensheviks. On the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. see
Lenin’s article “The Attitude Towards Bourgeois Parties” (present
edition, Vol. 12, pp. 489-509).

[7]Boyevism—from the Russian wordboyevik, a member of
the revolutionary fighting squads, who, during the revolutionary struggle,
used the tactics of armed action, helped political prisoners to escape,
expropriated state-owned funds for the needs of the revolution,removed spies andagents provocateurs, etc. During the Revolution
of 1905-07 the Bolsheviks a special fighting squads. See present edition,
Vol. 12, pp. 409-18.

[8]SeeK. Marx and F. Engels,Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow,
1958, pp. 104-05 and 107.

[9]PolishSocialist Party(Polska Partia
Socjalistyczna)—a reformist nationalist party founded in 1892. In
1906 the Party split into the P.S.P. Left wing and P. S. P. chauvinist
Right wing.